(3.5 / 5)
Craig Zobel’s Z For Zachariah may have the same PG-13 age rating as the bloodless Terminator Genisys1, but there’s more to this adaptation of Robert C. O’Brien’s classic junior sci-fi than just The Road for kiddies.
While Cormac McCarthy’s famously grim work of fiction is structured around, well, the road, Z For Zachariah concerns staying put. Abandoned farm girl Ann Burden (Margot Robbie) lives a quiet, isolated life, safe in her valley from the nuclear fallout that seems to have otherwise wiped out reality. Then John Loomis (Chiwetel Ejiofor) enters into her life.
While Ann is a blushing homebody — Robbie playing distinctly against type — and a Christian, Loomis is troubled atheist, a scientifically minded rationalist who wants to tear down her father’s church and build a waterwheel for power.
Zobel’s direction — combined with Tim Orr’s rich, textured cinematography — finds a balance between their deepening relationship and the broader autumnal world: the mist the fills the valley or sweeps across the hillsides is, in one instance, profoundly beautiful, the next utterly sinister; not unlike Loomis.
While Robbie initially seems, perhaps appropriately, ill at ease in her role, Ejiofor’s exuberant introduction — frizzy haired and bearded, screaming for joy as, teary-eyed, he removes his radiation suit —confirms him as one of the most fascinating actors of his generation. Ejiofor’s Appalachian American accent is also, perhaps, more on-point than Robbie’s southern drawl. Ann is, for the most part, such a wallflower you feel she could vanish in an empty room. Waking up beside Loomis she stares at his hand, seemingly amazed by his physical presence.
Their organized existence is quickly thrown out of whack, however, by the appearance of the non-canonical Caleb (Chris Pine). A scruffy-haired — he looks like a Flintstone’s character — blue-eyed good ole boy, his similar background to Ann allows them to quickly strike up a rapport, as opposed to the more emotionally shuttered Loomis.
Z For Zachariah finds its groove as a social drama about people finding a way to coexist: all the affection, anger, jealousy, and insecurity of society as a whole is packed into the microcosm of that farmhouse. The film is like a dramatic version of the premise-busting Last Man on Earth.
A rural I Am Legend without the monsters (Ann even has a dog), Z For Zachariah is a slow, meditative affair; one that finds a way, despite the “reality” of the situation, to end with a sort of hope. Albeit a hugely ambivalent, worryingly patriarchal sort of hope. It’s an ambiguity that Heather McIntosh’s score gets to the heart of.
